January 5, 2010

Asian Paints’ ColourNext initiative to predict the colour trends for 2009: added the dimension of sound to what was essentially a visual product, thereby engaging users through two faculties. This way, people actually spent more time exploring the various colour themes, rather than just visiting and seeing the colour palette and go away.

Tata Tea and Janaagraha’s ‘Jaago Re! One Billion Votes’ online campaign: From the previous year, when the campaign was launched and where the TVCs focused on incompetent politicians, it moved logically in the election year to urging the youth to vote, to select better leaders for a better democracy. Taking over from television, the Jaago Re online campaign and website became pivotal and played a key role in spreading awareness and engaging the youth to influence polity by exercising their right to vote. JaagoRe.com provided a platform to help voters across 35 large cities, accounting for 30 per cent of India’s populace, to register themselves online and to ensure that their names were included in the voter list. About three million people visited the site, of which about 600,000 registered for voting. On the social media front, the Jaago Re channel on YouTube garnered over one lakh views and had over 3,000 blog mentions. With support from almost 14,000 members on Facebook and more than 11,000 active participants on Orkut, the initiative was one of the most visible, engaging and discussed initiatives online. Post that campaign, the website (JaagoRe.com) now focuses at other social issues like corruption, education, global warming and women’s rights, clearly making the Jaago Re movement broader, and more and more contextual for every Indian.

Thums Up Thunder Wheels promo: was one of the campaigns that epitomized ‘digitized sales promotions’ where consumers had to purchase the product to be eligible for prizes. This platform has transformed the way users participate in campaigns. Earlier, users had to visit the retailer to redeem their prizes in exchange for bottle caps. On the other hand, this campaign has made the prize reach the user by allowing the user to participate in the contest through SMS. The Thums Up Thunder Wheels was a 45-day campaign where a TVS Apache RTR 160 motorbike was up for grabs. A unique code was printed under the bottle cap or behind the label (of a PET bottle) of Thums Up. The user, after making a purchase, had three options to participate in the contest -- by SMSing APACHE followed by the code or by call from a fixed line from anywhere in India or log online to leave their response. Since the campaign is over, the website has now been suspended. However, the TVC for this campaign can still be found at YouTube.

The online campaign announcing the launch of Road Movie for Toronto film festival was among the most innovative campaigns of 2009 because the treatment given to the Road Movie site focussed on how the movie unfolded.

Vodafone's Zoozoo online campaign was the best use of social media ever by a brand. Vodafone caught onto the shift of user preference to Facebook by deciding to build a community there. Of course, it went on to become -- and still is -- the largest fan-base on Facebook for an Indian brand. Also, the launch of the Zoozoo channel on YouTube integrated to the Facebook community and the Vodafone website was a first. The channel was the most popular on YouTube every time the Zoozoos made an appearance. According to the Adage Viral Videos chart, the Zoozoo online films were the top of the viral charts internationally for two weeks in a row. Incidentally, the new Complete the Zoozoo Story campaign is an attempt at crowd-sourcing. There are already close to 25,000 filled entries.

Bacardi’s MixBacardi.com :is a result of Bacardi’s association with music and a need to take entertainment directly where the consumer is. The promotional initiative recognizes the core passions of Bacardi which includes international music and thus engages consumers with the brand. It reaches out to the target group between 21 and 29 years, a community that is constantly connected to the web and mobile. To ensure more and more consumers enjoy this proposition, Bacardi has adopted a 360 degree approach where all offline promotions also include an opportunity to experience MixBacardi.com. Right from digital kiosks to surf and download to SMS short codes for enjoying entertainment on-the-go, the campaign ensures an integrated approach to create the correct consumer connect.

Lipton India’s Stay Sharp campaign was successful in using the power of interactive media to create engagement that highlighted the brand benefits but they left a lot to be desired.

Mitsubishi’s Great Driving Challenge was a short burst social campaign that scratched the surface of social media usage to its advantage and created a connect with the passionate driving enthusiasts but the issues with the campaign were that there was no follow-up activity to capitalize on the engaged user base and the creatives fell way short of expectations.